This story is based around Larna’s attempts to get back to her own dimension. She is helped by the people from the world she has just saved to get off the planet using a trading ship as transport. The Captain of that trading ship though has just a small ulterior motive for taking Larna along. He wants to sell her off to a mining planet, to work for the Overlord in the mines.
Only women are capable of working down in the heart of the mine. Men would die from the toxic fumes created by the chipping away and mining of the minerals below the surface. Once a woman goes to this planet she never returns and is never seen again. They are slaves working below the surface, treated more like criminals than people. The guards are brutal and often beat or sexual harass the women workers. The women have little or no choice but to accept the conditions that they have been sentenced too.
It starts with the initial payment room, where the Captain displays the treasures that he has to offer the mine. Examination of each woman is conducted…they are weighed, then stripped searched, in front of an all male audience, to check on their physical condition and suitability to work in the mine. If accepted they are fitted with a tight metal band around their wrist, which has a bar code on it. The next stage of the process is the changing room area, where they are all forced to change from their old clothes into badly fitting, loose dress that does not help cover her body. It is loose so that she is not restricted while working on hands and knees in the tunnels far below the surface. No underwear. No shoes. Just the one flimsy dress that when worn out will not be replaced. Given a talk on the rules of the mine. No talking to each other while working. Work well and be fed. Doing exactly what the guards say when they say. Not a person with a name anymore…just the number on the metal bracelet around their wrist. Partnered with another woman…locked together with ankle manacles with a short chain between them. Partnership punished together if one does something wrong. Makes it hard to fight when chained together in a pair…limits the movement of one person. Black mark system operated. Mark given for everything done against the rules. Five black marks and miss a meal. Ten and they get a punishment beating. Fifteen and they spend time in the isolation cell. Twenty and they are given to the guards who are free to do whatever they please with them. Final stage of the induction is the cage ride down into the mine itself.
Overlord is the old man in charge of the mine, who likes to use some of the women as sources of revitalising energy. They are hooked up to a machine which slowly drains them of energy to give to him. They do not die, just weakened by the process. Has a number of women who he uses on a regular rotator basis. Two are permanent in charge of looking after his ailing body and making sure that he is cleaned and maintained at all times. He is always strapped into a wheelchair…the affects of being down in the mine for so long. His wife is a lesbian, who loves nothing better than to abuse the women workers as often as she can in as many ways as she can. Normally likes to see them tied up and helpless to stop her from abusing them.
The women sleep in rough bunk beds, with no blankets or mattresses. Hard wooden beds offering little comfort after a hard days work in the mine. Fed once a day. Lose all track of time, as no daylight reaches the tunnels of the mine. Larna meets a friend, who she tries to protect. The friend is used by the Overlord and by his wife. Larna is plain beaten by the guards. But she plans to get her own back by escaping the tunnels and getting to a ship. Story involves her planning while being forced to work in the mines and watching while the young girl who she has befriended is beaten, raped and abused by the Overlord, his wife and the guards, often right in front of Larna’s face.